The Underpainter - Softcover

In Rochester, New York, a 75-year-old American minimalist painter, Austin Fraser, is creating a new series of paintings as he remembers the details of his life and of the lives of those individuals who have affected him -- his peculiar mother, a young Canadian soldier and china painter, a nurse from World War I, the well-known American painter Rockwell Kent, and a waitress who lives in the wilderness mining settlement of Silver Islet, Ontario, and who became Austin's model and mistress. Spanning more than seven decades, from the turn of the century until the mid-70s, the story takes place in upstate New York, on the north shores of both Lake Ontario and Lake Superior, in France during the First World War, and in New York City during the '20s and '30s.

Jane Urquhart is the bestselling author of five internationally acclaimed, award-winning novels. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Storm Glass, and three books of poetry. She lives in Southwestern Ontario. She is the winner of numerous awards and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Stone Carvers and the International IMPAC award.